XCOM: Enemy Within - Who is EXALT?

EXALT is a paramilitary secret society. Their goal is to capture the benefits of the aliens’ arrival – their genetic project for humanity and their technology – and use those advantages to rule what’s left of the world once the aliens have completed their plan and departed. And XCOM is in the way.

One of the things that we really wanted to enhance in Enemy Within was the idea of player-driven missions. The alien invasion throws a lot of challenges at the player, but fundamentally the player doesn’t control the cadence or pace of the missions; when an abduction mission happens, the player can choose whether or not to deal with it (and which country to help), but there is no strategy around timing them. In Enemy Within, we wanted to change that.

EXALT works by placing hidden cells in the Council countries. If left hidden for too long, EXALT cells will carry out a variety of operations against XCOM – Propaganda to increase panic, Sabotage to destroy XCOM’s funds, and Research Hack to cancel research progress.